


The Calm

by Noducksinpond



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Multi, My idea of post season 2, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 17:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3618384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noducksinpond/pseuds/Noducksinpond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke may have left Camp Jaha for 3 months, but that doesn´t mean life back there stands still. Or what happens in between season 2 and 3</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Octavia

**Author's Note:**

> This is obviously written on the assumption that Jason Rothenberg and the other writers put in a gap between season 2 and 3, and if they do what would happen for each character in that time. There´s a chapter planned out for most characters, but there is still a few characters I´m on the fence about, whether or not to write a chapter for, but if you want I probably can.

Bellamy barely says a word for the first week. Not that either of them is particularly talkative usually, but after being separated from him for so long and him risking his life inside that goddamn mountain, Octavia would appreciate it if he could give responses longer than 2 words. Living under the floorboards on the Ark had gotten her to a point, where she liked talking to Bellamy. It was Bellamy, who she had talk with back on the Ark, whenever she needed to talk. They might have started butting heads once they got on the ground, but Bellamy was still the first person, she thought of, when she wanted to talk. Bellamy and Lincoln. “You do know Clarke is coming back eventually right?” Octavia tells him one night as they´re sitting by the fire.

“Yeah,” he says. He doesn´t even sound like he needed to be convinced. Not that Octavia exactly misses Clarke. The other girl had done too many things, Octavia couldn´t ever justify anyone doing for that. But she would have to be blind not to see that Bellamy does. Octavia really doesn´t care whatever is between the two of them, but regardless Bellamy is still her brother.

“Then stop acting like she´s dead,” Octavia replies frankly. Because that´s the way he behaves, but then again he is probably not sure whether she is coming back or not. He doesn´t say anything for a few minutes, but then he looks directly at her.

“How long are you and Lincoln sticking around?” he asks then, and she shouldn´t be surprised that he figured that out, even though she hadn´t mentioned it. It´s sometimes a little frightening how well Bellamy knows her. Guess that´s what you get for not leaving your home for the first many years of your life.

In that moment she shrugs, because she genuinely doesn´t know, but they stick around for two weeks more, before a couple of Lexa´s warriors, among them Indra, show up at the gates of camp Jaha. A stunt the warriors only survive because of her and Lincoln, which makes them less intent on cutting Lincoln´s head off.

It turns out Lexa simply wants to insure that the Arkers won´t strike back because of the deal. In reality they couldn´t even if they wanted to, so the negotiations are quick and shift this time. But Octavia does get them to add one detail, Lincoln gets pardoned. Something, which Lexa actually agrees to surprisingly easy. She does however ask about Clarke, and Octavia has to tell her the truth: nobody knows where the hell she is. Lexa seems hurt by this, but Octavia can´t bring herself to care. After all, the commander did leave her people to fend for themselves, as soon as she had gotten her own out. Lexa honestly isn´t Octavia´s favourite person, actually she is far from it.

After the negotiations finish, about a month after they got out of Mount Weather, she and Lincoln leave. Not permanently, she can´t leave Bellamy by himself, but there is so much of the world they haven´t seen. And in all honestly she just needs to be alone with Lincoln, because her life has been such a whirlwind for so long that she needs the calm while at the same time having the adventure of seeing some of the world. If nothing else that thought makes sense in her own head.

They´re gone for more than 3 weeks and honestly speaking, those 3 weeks are the best weeks of her life. She just has to exist, exist and discover the world and she gets to do it with the man she loves. Lincoln lights up too, he is recovering from his addiction and things are looking up. Octavia smiles more in those three weeks than she think she ever has, whether that is on the Ark, in the camp by the drop ship, with the grounders or in camp Jaha. She finally feels completely at peace with herself.

“I´m glad it´s gone,” Lincoln said one day, after they´ve walked in silence for a good long while. She smiles at him. Up until now, he hadn´t told her anything about the reaper serum, and she instinctively knew that was what he meant now. _Get knocked down, get back up again._ “I´m glad the darkness has faded.”

“Me too,” she replied, more softly than she had said anything in a good long while. “I like you too much to shoot you.” Lincoln may not be cracking jokes at any time, but he does laugh quietly, before he leans in to kiss her. It is hard to describe the feeling that settles in her chest, as she stands there with the man she loves. In a way it´s similar to how she felt, when she set her foot on the ground, although less doe eyed and overly ecstatic than then. She feels like she has a chance of living, not just surviving on half rations under the floorboards of the Ark, or beating herself half to death in training to fight a war against Mount Weather. Fighting made her stronger, made her tougher, but this feeling, this warm soft feeling, this is worth hanging onto. They continue their walk without another word that day; none of them feels the need to talk and it´s peaceful.

But their trip eventually ends, and they go back to camp Jaha. Here she doesn´t just discover, that Bellamy has taken a job offered by Kane, but also that Clarke returned just a day before them. Octavia would be lying, if she said she was surprised. Neither are things she knows how she feels about. Not right now anyway.


	2. Monty

Being back after so long is weird. Of course, it´s not technically _back_ back. It´s not really the Ark, but at the same time it is. It is the same people he saw every day of his life until he was thrown in jail for selling drugs. It is some of the same rules, as it used to be, although a little less strict than what he grew up with, and the forest surrounding them, reminds him of the dropship. The only thing that ruins it is Jasper, or rather the utter lack of Jasper, because he hasn´t seen Jasper even once since they entered the camp, even though he knows from Raven that he hasn´t gone anywhere. Abby had offered him work in medical, and he´d taken it. It gave him something to do, that wasn´t causing any damage. That wasn´t hurting people. Because he can´t get what they ended up doing at Mount Weather out of his head, no matter how hard he tries.

He should have refused to do it. They wouldn´t have been able to figure it out without him, but if he hadn´t helped kill the mountain men, his refusal to help would have killed the Arkers and the 44. He would have their blood on his hands instead. He doesn´t know what is the right choice, but it doesn´t matter what it is. He has no way of going back to how things were. It bothers him too, that Bellamy seems like he has recovered or at least that it does not bother him as much as it does her.

Clarke had whispered something in his ear before she left: that she had to go. That he understood, he almost wanted to go with her. But it dawned on him that she had to do this alone, and he wasn´t sure he could do this with Clarke, because in the end it was her who had pulled the lever. Her and Bellamy. But Bellamy almost appears exactly the same as before, and it kind of pisses him off. The guy seems exactly the same with his stoic face, and quiet attitude. It´s almost like he doesn´t give a shit about what he had done to keep them alive. But then again there is a world of difference between Bellamy and Clarke, so had he really expected any better?

At least he still has Nate and Harper, even if they see him less now than in the mountain. His mother didn´t survive the Ark crash, so he is mostly by himself, just working and trying not to think too much about how he got here. It gets easier; the days just start flooding together. Working with Harper most of the day, talking with Nate when they have a shift as guards together, falling back into their routine of talking about anything and everything from their quieter moments in Mount Weather. He never really knew why he wasn´t really talking to Nate, back when they first landed on the ground, but maybe it was because he hadn´t really thought to hang around anyone but Jasper. He is glad he has Nate now though, really glad.

It´s when Bellamy comes to talk with him, that it all comes boiling up to the surface again. He isn´t a very angry person, but he is now. Apparently, he wants his opinion on something, but he doesn´t get to say anything before Monty says it, his words loaded with acid: “Do you even care?”

“What?” Bellamy says a little confused.

“That we killed everyone in the mountain?” Monty asks, annoyed that he didn´t immediately guess that, and Bellamy visibly flinches. He swallowed hard, and then just looked at him. Gone is the look of the asshole, who´d thought himself superior to absolutely anyone at the camp. It dawned on him that he didn´t know the guy particularly well, he had always chosen to place his faith in Clarke more than Bellamy. She had always seemed like the more reasonable of the two of them, and Bellamy´s behaviour in the beginning hadn´t exactly made him Monty´s favourite person in the world. At first it had been utterly confusing to him why Nate could even tolerate hanging around him.

“What the hell do you think, Monty?” he replied, and it comes out emptier, more tired than Bellamy probably intended it too. “Of course I care. I- I didn´t want to kill them,” he paused for a second and dodged Monty´s searching eyes.

“But we did what we had to, and now we have to live with it.”

It kind of pisses Monty off that he said that, kind of wants to yell or bite at him, tell him he can do better than that explanation, but at the same time he understands it. He knows Bellamy is right, as much as he hates it, he is right.

He talks with Nate about it later that night, he doesn´t know when Miller had gotten easier to talk to than Jasper, probably around the same time, Monty had helped Bellamy and Clarke radiate everyone in the mountain. He and Nate had a guard shift together, and they´d ended up in the east ending of the camp. “He is right,” Miller had said, and Monty had rolled his eyes because he already knew that much. “We may have done a lot of shit, but we still got to live.”

“Yeah,” Monty said his voice slightly shaky. He glanced over at Nate. “We still got to live.”


	3. Raven

The first week is spent recovering, as much as she hates it. Nearly everyone of her friends comes to visit her at some point, first it´s Bellamy, then it´s Octavia with Lincoln, looking as much like lovebirds as two grounder warriors can, then it´s Jasper and Monty – notably by themselves. Everyone comes to see her except Clarke. Not that she had expected it, laying 3 beds from Abby, she heard it the first day, when they´d gotten into medical, and Wick had put her down.

Clarke left. Clarke had left without looking back. No goodbye to anyone, or at least that´s what it seems like.

Raven honestly doesn´t know how she feels about that. Doesn´t know what to think. She knew the line had to go somewhere, even for Clarke, and apparently that line is killing everyone in the mountain. A selfish part of her wishes it had gone somewhere before killing Finn, even if she knows Clarke probably saved him a lot of pain by stabbing him.

Wick gets out of medical before her, which she is endlessly envious of, however it barely seems like he left because he shows up to baby her at least twice every day the last 3 days, she is stuck there. His arm isn´t doing too good, but otherwise he is as annoying as ever, although slightly more endearing than before. But that might just be because he brings her things to tinker with, so she has something else to do than stare at the metal ceiling and desperately willing her body to mend, so she could get the hell out of there.

After she gets out, life returns to normal. She works in engineering all day and all night improving camp Jaha, she bickers with Kyle and curls up next to him late at night. Despite the fact that his arm still isn´t doing too good, he lets her sleep curled up in his arms, and Raven appreciates the fact that he makes a good pillow. That and the way his lips feel when they kiss her neck. Maybe other things too, but she isn´t quite ready to think about that. Life isn´t exactly perfect like this, especially considering the fact that she still has the brace and wouldn´t be able to manage without it, but things are fine. In fact, Wick actually jokes that things are getting boring, and she punches his arm, because he´s definitely jinxed it now. They´re probably going to end up fighting a war in a week or two if he keeps going like that.

It turns out he has jinxed it, but not nearly as bad, as she had been worried he might have. Because the following day Sinclair manages to get himself injured, and when he has to come up with someone to run things while he recovers, his first choice is Raven. She accepts it instantly, even though she is a little baffled by the fact that he is actually asking her, given that she would be a mechanic doing an engineer´s job – god she would have hated that thought 6 months ago, probably would have thrown up too. Funny, how being on Earth changes your perspective on things. But Sinclair tells her he doesn´t want anyone else to do it, and even if she screws up, you eventually recover from pressured ribs. So she accepts, and can´t keep the smug grin off her face for the rest of the day.

It only occurs to her, as she´s telling it to Kyle later that night, that he might be salty about it, after all he is kind of a jerk, so she wouldn´t put it past him. He´d also been Sinclair´s lapdog back at the Ark, something which she had fucking resented him for, especially because he was proud of it. Then again, that´s his problem not hers. But to her surprise, he actually isn´t, instead he just smirks and says: “Does this means you´re my boss now?”

“Damn right,” she answers with a smug smile. A brief proud look flashed on his face. Wick made an effort to make a mockingly horrified face, and Raven swatted him lightly on the arm. Good arm obviously, he whines too much when you hit him on the bad one. Something, which Raven knew from experience. _Such a baby._

And that´s it. Things continue as they have since they came back, except the fact that Raven gets to boss the 2 mechanics and 4 engineers on ground even more around than she already did. She discovers, she likes being in charge and is apparently really good at it, if an impressed smile from Sinclair is anything to go by. Despite his ribs, he can´t stay completely out of engineering. Raven is the last person to blame him for that, considering how badly she had wanted to get there. Lexa comes and goes, with no news of Clarke, Bellamy sulks until he gets a job with Kane, then he sulks a little less, Octavia and Lincoln leave to go gallivanting somewhere, Jasper still avoids Monty like the plague, but she feels like she in her element.

Raven felt most at home, in her element, when she could just work and had people that she could depend on. She knew everyone left her eventually, both her dad, her mom, Finn and Clarke had. But at the same time, maybe it feels like this might actually be permanent. That maybe the engineers and mechanics and work and camp Jaha are actually here to stay. That maybe this is what she could expect out of life for the next long while. Maybe that should sound boring, but in reality, Raven thought it sounded nice. Peaceful. It would be a nice change.

Things are good, and then Clarke comes back. Which well, any dream of peace and quiet is kind of gone with that right?


	4. Bellamy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we´re nearing the end now with Clarke´s chapter next time. I hope you enjoy this one before then.

He spends the first week just working, there is enough to do in a camp that suddenly has 40 more inhabitants than it had just a few days before, and did take some damage during the war even if it was out of the main line of fire. It gives him something to do. Something to do is exactly what he needs right now, because for some reason now she´s gone, Clarke´s goodbye seems to be stuck in his head.

He feels horrible about what they did, of course he does. He didn´t want to kill the innocent, never did. But somewhere around the time they´d backed themselves up in a corner, he´d realized one thing. Octavia wouldn´t make it out, if he didn´t do it. So he had, because at the end of the day, nothing in the world could even compare to what he´d do for Octavia´s sake. If that means he is going to be haunted by this for a good long while, then that just is how it is going to be.

Suck it up and live with it.

So that´s what he does, and he doesn´t run away from what they did. Clarke´s words are practically imprinted in his skin. He can´t leave the camp now, even if he wanted to, not when she told him to look after them. He doesn´t think too much, about why Clarke´s words suddenly matter so much to him. It doesn´t matter why. Raven tells him to stop sulking, and he fires back that he isn´t sulking, and the mechanic rolls her eyes at him, and returns to her work. She has enough to do, since Sinclair, the head engineer, just put her in charge, after he felt and pressured his ribs.

The first big change comes, when Lexa´s warriors return lead by Indra, who Octavia clearly knows. If it hadn´t been for Lincoln and Octavia, they would have been at war with the grounders again, because the guards were about a fraction of a second away from shooting them full of bullets. He doesn´t ask about Clarke, but Abby does. Indra tells her, she is not with them. Bellamy´s not really surprised, he doesn´t know much about what happened with Clarke and the Grounders, once he went off to Mount Weather, but Clarke was trying to find herself, trying to live with her wrongs. He didn´t figure she could do that with the people who she had killed Finn for. Not if he knew anything about her. He doesn´t really get mixed up in the talks between the grounders, Kane and the chancellor. He isn´t good at this politics thing, so he doesn´t see the point. That´s probably why he´s surprised when Kane comes to find him.

He says a lot of things, fine words, carefully picked to persuade Bellamy to listen to him, but what he says is simple. Abby and Kane wants him to take charge of the 41, and have a say in their decisions about the camp. He´s pretty sure they´re going to be insistent, even if they were giving him a change to say no. He´s surprised by the suggestion to say the least, to his understanding neither Abby nor Kane particularly liked him. “They listen to you, and they owe you their lives after all. We all owe you our lives.”

 _Clarke, Monty and me._ He wanted to say, but Clarke was gone, and Monty was god knows where in the camp. Bellamy hadn´t seen him for more than in flashes since they came back. That left him, but that didn´t mean he wasn´t still going to track down Monty. They talk, Monty´s pissed at him, but they do talk. They do work things out, and they end up deciding it´s a good idea he works with Kane. Maybe it can actually get the 41 some say in how things should work around here.

 _“Take care of them for me,” Clarke´s broken voice echoed inside his head._ He closes his eyes and sighs. He knows that is what she would want to do too. He has no doubts, from everything he knows about her, she wouldn´t like it too much, but she would do it anyway. So that´s what he does, and he comes into a sort of routine again, but maybe a little happier than before. Then one day, out of the blue, Clarke is back. He´s on guard by the perimeter that day, and out of a sudden she just stands there. He almost has a small heart attack, and feels like all the breath has been knocked out of his lungs.  

“You´re back,” he said, his voice hoarser than he had expected it. He looked over her, she looked the same in a way but also different. Her hair was done back in a braid, which he hadn´t seen in what felt like eons, and she had dark circles under her eyes. But she was still without a doubt Clarke. Still a little bruised and broken around the edges. She smiled weakly at him.

“Yeah,” she said quietly, her eyes not meeting his.

“Are you alright?” he asked and took a step towards her. Clarke shook her head slightly, and it felt like something twisted in his chest. She walked towards him, and stopped beside him.

“Come on,” she said quietly, her voice still hoarse, probably from lack of use. They walked along side each other into camp.


	5. Clarke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter got a little bit away from me, but on the other hand it is the last chapter.

For a long time she just walks. Constantly moving keeps her head at ease, she stops seeing their faces. The moment she stops, she sees flashes. Her mother on the table, Maya dying in Jasper´s arms, all the kids, oh god all the kids. It´s all her fault, Bellamy may have helped her pull that lever, Monty may have been the one to hack the system, but it´s her fault. It takes days before these thoughts really start bothering her, but once they do, they seem deafening. All she feels is numbness and a carelessness, she´s never felt before. Because nothing matters, except to keep moving, to keep putting the mountain behind her in any way she can.

Somehow, it always seem to be on her horizon, no matter what direction she turns, looming like a massive grave in front of her.

She doesn´t know how long it´s been, when she runs into the first grounder village. It seems like centuries, since she saw another human being. It is such a small village, that Clarke is worried no one actually speaks English. But it turns out one girl does, Maitha. She is hard to understand, because it sounds like English from decades ago, but Clarke gets the basics. She is the healer Irina´s apprentice, an old woman with long grey braids and dark eyes so deep that Clarke feels like she is staring into a lake. She asks if she can stay for a few days, and both the other women nod. She doesn´t realize how relieved she feels, before they´ve actually said it. But she doesn´t tell them much about herself, except she is a doctor looking for somewhere safe. She can´t tell anyone about mount Weather.

She doesn´t ask about Lexa, or ask for directions to Polis. The feeling that overshadows everything else when she thinks of Lexa is hurt. Hurt and betrayal. She doesn´t want to see her again right now. But then again, she isn´t even sure she wants to see her mother again at this point.

It turns out that the healers have enough to do, despite the size of the village. Irina is apparently well known by grounders in the area, so patients comes travelling almost every single day. Maitha explains to Clarke, that Irina is the wisest healer in this part of the forest, and everyone who has been given up by other healers come to see her. Lost souls they call themselves. Lost until Irina guides them home. One day Irina says something to Clarke, and when she stares confused at the older woman, Maitha translates.

“She wants you to help.”

Clarke had hesitated for a second, she hadn´t done anything like this since before Mount Weather. The dead radiation damaged bodies flashed before her eyes. She had been a different person back then. All the thoughts that she´d worked so hard to push down and ignore seemed to come back. She´d kill the patient, all she did now was bring death with her. But despite her doubts, she still ends up saying with a hoarse voice: “What do you need me to do?”

Many days later, Irina doesn´t seem able to keep quiet anymore. By now Clarke has learned a little bit Grounder language, but it is still hard for her to understand, so Maitha repeats it: “You´ve told us how you got here, but you´ve not told us why you got here.”

“It´s a boring story,” Clarke argues, which might just be the biggest lie, she has ever told.

“I doubt it girl,” Irina said in a tone that made it clear she expected Clarke to talk, no matter how much it might hurt her. But Clarke wasn´t worried about herself, she was worried about what Irina would say once she´d heard it.

 _I am become death, destroyer of worlds._ Back when she and Bellamy had argued about Oppenheimer, she wouldn´t have imagined how well that line would end up fitting her. But she still tells her story, quietly but emotionlessly, almost as if it happened to someone else eons ago. Her eyes doesn´t leave Maitha or Irina´s faces, wanting to watch them as they come to know.

As they suddenly realize they let a murderer be a healer. But they don´t look horrified at all, instead Irina just simply says, and with the little grounder language Clarke has learned she understands it: “It seems we have another lost soul Irina.”

And they let her stay. They let her stay and it´s a miracle. Clarke falls into a routine again, keeps learning the language, making her entire world this village, nothing outside matters. Until of course, eventually it does. A grounder from Lincoln´s village end up in Irina´s care, one of his eyes ripped out, storms are coming he tells her, he remembers her from Lexa´s army. His English is horrible, but with Maitha as translator, Clarke gets his general message. The war isn´t won, he doesn´t know what is coming, but the war isn´t won.

Clarke wants to scream, yell, cry at the unfairness of it all. That she killed everyone in the mountain, but she still can´t get left alone. But that belonged in a different time, Clarke hasn´t done any of that in a long while. Instead, she weighs the ups and downs of leaving, calm and clearheaded. That is what does it; she leaves. Irina tells her she is always welcome back, and Clarke believes her. She is not sure she is coming back though.

Then she finds herself just outside Camp Jaha´s gates. It is late afternoon, and the familiarity of it all is almost overwhelming. _They´re alive because I killed those people_ is a thought that passes through her head, and she shakes it out as quickly as she can. She is beyond it now, except of course she isn´t. Then she sees Bellamy, on guard by the fence. He looks exactly the same, almost from this distance. A small smile almost sneaks on her face, and she almost considers turning around and leaving again. If he´s here he´ll take care of them. But then Bellamy spots her, and even if she had a chance to run off again she wouldn´t.

“Clarke,” he said, his face calm but something surprised and shocked in his eyes. His voice was dry, but otherwise monotone. He appeared to swallow hard. “You´re back.”

“Yeah,” she replied quietly, her voice raw and unused. She´d been walking for days with nobody´s company but her own. She almost wanted to walk closer to him, hug him like she had when she´d first returned from Mount Weather, but just almost.

“Are you alright?” he asked quietly, and Clarke wasn´t sure whether to laugh or cry. So she stuck to just shaking her head slightly. Something in his eyes appeared to fall, so Clarke walked forward and they headed into camp together.


End file.
